By Team InBilt
Published on 30TH October, 2026
The week gone by saw five major entities – Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Adani Enterprises (AEL), Adani Ports and SEZ (APSEZ), JSW Infrastructure and GMR Airports reported their quarterly performance for the period ending September, 2026. Between these five companies, unravels much of India’s infrastructure development, road business, airport traffic and port volumes growth story. With geo-political development and execution challenges, infrastructure is not a smooth playground, each of these however, have roughed it out with their own strength and strategies.
Q2FY27 Wrap
As of September 2026, L&T’s outstanding order book was at Rs 8.53 trillion, its highest ever, and new orders of Rs 1.4 trillion for the quarter. Of the new orders, Rs 35,000 crore worth orders came from infrastructure and utilities, close to 70 percent of which was from India. The company said new orders in the quarter from this segment saw close to a 15 per cent dip from a year ago, as the order wins saw a slow down post the first quarter of FY27.
That is for fresh orders, infrastructure performance for air traffic and hence airports also reported a sluggishness in the quarter gone by. GMR Airports said domestics passenger traffic for its airports remained unchanged on a year on year (YoY) basis, while All India passenger traffic during the same period was down 3.1% YoY. Executives from Adani Enterprises (that houses the airport vertical), noted elevated fuel prices and airspace disturbances have weighed negatively on passenger traffic.
In the ports sector – Adani Ports and SEZ reported a 3.5 per cent growth in cargo volumes at 118 million tonnes, compared to 114 MT a year ago, at its domestic ports. JSW Infrastructure said cargo volumes at its India operations were up 8 per cent in the same period, significantly ahead of industry growth of 5%.
A Set of Challenges
Geo-political tensions have weighed on India’s appetite for air travel, with a dip reported at the overall numbers. Companies such as Adani Airports have noted, their focus on non-aero revenue sources, have helped boost the July-September 2026 quarter performance. GMR Airports modest growth in passenger traffic is largely driven by addition of new airport operations, the company has noted, “Q2 is seasonally a soft quarter – Traffic is stronger in H2.”
While L&T remains confident of a robust infrastructure order pipeline in the coming months, the company’s senior executives in a post-results call with the media noted, the segment has seen challenges related to geo-politics, impacting execution and input costs both in domestic and international orders.
Optimism for H2
While port volumes are already on the path to recovery, executives at APSEZ have informed analysts domestic container volumes are recovering following ME-related disruptions. “Domestic cargo growth has started recovering, with double-digit volume growth already visible as of Oct’28. Management expects market share to improve in Q3/Q4FY27 as temporary disruptions ease,” analysts with PL Capital noted in a recent report.
Optimism with port companies is high enough for APSEZ to have made revision in the FY27 guidance. APSEZ has raised its FY27 revenue/EBITDA guidance by Rs 1000 crore each.
L&T in its stated pipeline for the infrastructure sector, informed analysts, the infrastructure and utilities prospects pipeline for the remaining six months is approximately Rs. 5.84 trillion. The pipeline comprises of domestic prospects of Rs. 4.59 trillion and international prospects of Rs. 1.25 trillion. The subsegment breakup of the total order prospects is 24 per cent of transportation infrastructure and a 19 per cent of heavy civil infrastructure.
